PowerPoint 2013: Images in presentation disappear - and are replaced with 'The image part with relationship ID rId2 was not found in the file'

OK, I'll throw out a couple of ideas.

From the message, it sounds like PPT is "losing track" of the image file. I can think of a couple of reasons for this happening:

• There is the obvious "brute force" approach where PPT actually deleted the image file for some unknown reason.
• The other possibility is that PPT is simply getting confused. The image file is still part of the file structure, but PPT has lost track of it somehow.

This it sounds VAGUELY like the XML "End Tag" problem in Word.  When people use the Word "Equation Editor" to make changes to an equation that was previously entered, Word gets stupid and misplaces an XML End Tag. That makes the file unreadable.  I am wondering if PPT is simply "losing track" of the image file.

I was going to suggest trying to match the image file name to the entry in the slide XML file.  Too bad it isn't that simple. I just looked at a (good) presentation.  Slide one displays an image file with the name "Image15.jpeg".  Too bad I can't find that in the slide XML file.  Can anyone tell me / us how the image file is related to the slide xml file?  I can't even identify any XML tags that appear related to image display.

Here is the XML for the slide that displays "IMAGE15.JPEG"

Slide1.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<p:sld xmlns:a="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main" xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:p="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/presentationml/2006/main"><p:cSld><p:spTree><p:nvGrpSpPr><p:cNvPr id="1" name=""/><p:cNvGrpSpPr/><p:nvPr/></p:nvGrpSpPr><p:grpSpPr><a:xfrm><a:off x="0" y="0"/><a:ext cx="0" cy="0"/><a:chOff x="0" y="0"/><a:chExt cx="0" cy="0"/></a:xfrm></p:grpSpPr><p:sp><p:nvSpPr><p:cNvPr id="2" name="Title 1"/><p:cNvSpPr><a:spLocks noGrp="1"/></p:cNvSpPr><p:nvPr><p:ph type="ctrTitle"/></p:nvPr></p:nvSpPr><p:spPr/><p:txBody><a:bodyPr/><a:lstStyle/><a:p><a:r><a:rPr lang="en-US" dirty="0" smtClean="0"/><a:t>The Story of the Ribbon</a:t></a:r><a:endParaRPr lang="en-US" dirty="0"/></a:p></p:txBody></p:sp><p:sp><p:nvSpPr><p:cNvPr id="3" name="Subtitle 2"/><p:cNvSpPr><a:spLocks noGrp="1"/></p:cNvSpPr><p:nvPr><p:ph type="subTitle" idx="1"/></p:nvPr></p:nvSpPr><p:spPr><a:xfrm><a:off x="905740" y="2562731"/><a:ext cx="6463247" cy="1514417"/></a:xfrm></p:spPr><p:txBody><a:bodyPr/><a:lstStyle/><a:p><a:r><a:rPr lang="en-US" dirty="0" smtClean="0"/><a:t>Jensen Harris</a:t></a:r></a:p><a:p><a:r><a:rPr lang="en-US" dirty="0" smtClean="0"/><a:t>Principal Group Program Mgr.</a:t></a:r></a:p><a:p><a:r><a:rPr lang="en-US" dirty="0" smtClean="0"/><a:t>Office User Experience Team</a:t></a:r><a:endParaRPr lang="en-US" dirty="0"/></a:p></p:txBody></p:sp></p:spTree></p:cSld><p:clrMapOvr><a:masterClrMapping/></p:clrMapOvr><p:transition/><p:timing><p:tnLst><p:par><p:cTn id="1" dur="indefinite" restart="never" nodeType="tmRoot"/></p:par></p:tnLst></p:timing></p:sld>

In my case the file with the lost images is significantly smaller than the original file (980 Mb vs 292 Mb) so I suspect that the images are actually deleted, not just a lost pointer or xml tag.

Yup, there is the disclaimer.  

I guess in my sarcastic mode,  I was thinking of something more explicit like "Beware, PowerPoint 2013 is known to exhibit erratic behavior resulting in hours of lost work for some users"

In my case the file with the lost images is significantly smaller than the original file (980 Mb vs 292 Mb) so I suspect that the images are actually deleted, not just a lost pointer or xml tag.

Every time I have lost images the file size shrunk accordingly.  I did discover that one time an embedded video had been replaced with an image of the embedded video.

Since the images are not longer "Embedded" I would expect the files size to go down accordingly.

MM